Patterns of encompassment: Juxtaposition or hierarchy? A Malay case

The paper approaches Dumont's hypothesis of value hierarchy by examining the interconnection between gender, kinship and seniority in Malay rural society, maintaining the idea that seniority is a prominent value. A process is described in which a structure of gender‐neutral seniority and balanced gender collectivities gives way to a stronger collusion between seniority and maleness, personified in the husband‐wife dyad. The author is open to the possibility of a “hierarchising impulse” in cultural processes, but doubts that ultimate values will ever fully emerge in social realities because “society” has no unambiguous delimitation, and because organizational and communicative domains shrink and expand over time so that any dominant value can be challenged through organizational innovations.